How to help end structural racism

Discussions about serious topics, for serious people
User avatar
Vertigowooyay
Snowbonk
Posts: 423
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:25 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Vertigowooyay » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:13 pm

Dr David Starkey, ladies and gentlemen. "Historian".

https://twitter.com/Louis_Allday/status ... 3330928642
Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there?
Calm yourself Doctor NotTheNineO’ClockNews. We’re men of science. We fear no worldly terrors.

User avatar
Gfamily
Light of Blast
Posts: 5179
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:00 pm
Location: NW England

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Gfamily » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:32 pm

Vertigowooyay wrote:
Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:13 pm
Dr David Starkey, ladies and gentlemen. "Historian".

https://twitter.com/Louis_Allday/status ... 3330928642
Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there?
Great response from below
Starkey is a man who has dedicated his life to learning about history but not one second to learning from it.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Wed Jul 22, 2020 10:33 am

In case anyone is interested in a philosophical/theoretical discussion about social equality and nonviolent protest there is a live online lecture/Q and A with Judith Butler (chaired by Amia Srinivasan) at 5pm tomorrow: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/even ... th-butler/ presumably in light of BLM and to coincide with the publication of her new book.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Jul 22, 2020 12:48 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Jun 18, 2020 1:51 am
In terms of reading lists, the US bestsellers list is currently awash with books by people of colour, written expressly for white people who want to do their bit. I've downloaded (but not yet read) How to be an Anti Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. Some others mentioned here and here is another list in the Guardian for a UK audience. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo looks like an excellent primer.

I really think the most helpful thing most of us can do is be self-reflective, be active in the conversations happening around us, and encourage our communities to actively promote opportunities for people of colour. Listen to people, feel uncomfortable, process it. We're gonna have to be total anti-racism nerds.
I have downloaded and almost finished the Kendi’s book. Which is good.

Does anyone have a recommendation for one to read next? For balance it would be nice to read one that wasn’t written from a US perspective.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:32 pm

Natives by Akala gets a lot of good press, it is on my list.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
Bird on a Fire
Princess POW
Posts: 10137
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:05 pm
Location: Portugal

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:43 pm

discovolante wrote:
Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:32 pm
Natives by Akala gets a lot of good press, it is on my list.
It is really excellent, and I highly recommend it. It's probably more of an account of current and historical structural racism in Britain rather than a guide to ending it, but that's valuable too.

The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla is another good one along from a UK perspective.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:47 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:43 pm
discovolante wrote:
Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:32 pm
Natives by Akala gets a lot of good press, it is on my list.
It is really excellent, and I highly recommend it. It's probably more of an account of current and historical structural racism in Britain rather than a guide to ending it, but that's valuable too.

The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla is another good one along from a UK perspective.
Yeah I like Akala, I just haven't read the book yet :oops:

Did you know his big sister is Ms Dynamite? Little fun fact for you there.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
Vertigowooyay
Snowbonk
Posts: 423
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:25 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Vertigowooyay » Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:31 pm

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... SApp_Other

The least they could do. And they won’t.
Calm yourself Doctor NotTheNineO’ClockNews. We’re men of science. We fear no worldly terrors.

User avatar
Stephanie
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2896
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:38 pm
Location: clinging tenaciously to your buttocks

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Stephanie » Fri Nov 13, 2020 4:30 pm

discovolante wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 11:01 am
This might not be the right thread for it, but I just wanted to post about something that's been happening over the last couple of days.

A couple of days ago Dr Priyamvada Gopal, a lecturer (Professor? See below) in colonial and postcolonial literature and theory at Cambridge Uni who is very active on Twitter - and who also wrote Insurgent Empire which was published last year, and which I read earlier this year and posted about briefly on the book thread (it is very interesting), tweeted 'White lives do not matter. As white lives.' (I can't find the tweet now, it may have been removed - see below).

Provocative maybe, but she has explained that what she meant was that whiteness is not something in itself that needs protecting. She used this analogy (I'm picking this explanation because caste and anti-blackness in India is also something she tweets about a lot):
20200625_113614.jpg

https://mobile.twitter.com/PriyamvadaGo ... 0485108737

(Can I suggest, at this point, that this thread isn't the place to debate the rightness or wrongness about what she's saying, or whether she is inciting hatred or whatever.)

Anyway shortly following this she is bombarded with an absolute torrent of racist abuse and death threats, to her Twitter account (check her timeline, it's an absolute shitshow), her (presumably work) email account etc. She has tweeted a lot of the emails she received and retweeted some of the abusive tweets so I'm not going to repeat them here, you can see for yourself, but it's vile. Apparently people she knows have been threatened too. She thinks it originated from 4chan, that lovely place.

This morning Dr Charlotte Riley, tweeted to say that Dr (Prof?) Gopal has been suspended from Twitter 'for making public the racist abuse she has been receiving' and linked to a medium article from her explaining what had happened but as of last night it was announced that she has been promoted to Professorial Chair. The reason I keep ??ing whether she should be called Prof is because I don't know how the academic system works, I assume it is another name for a professorship but there seem to be all sorts of weird other titles so please let me know...

Link here: https://mobile.twitter.com/lottelydia/s ... 6757613568

What I don't get is that her account is still visible and I don't know what reasons she was actually given by Twitter, but it seems bonkers to suspend her account if that's what has happened.

Something to note is that several people involved in the attack against her have compared Cambridge Uni's stance of defending her (which they have done) to the same uni rescinding its offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, accusing it of hypocrisy/double standards and anti-white racism.

Anyway as I said, I wasn't sure where best to put this and if it does get discussed and it seems it should be moved to a different thread or split to a new one I will do that. I just chose to post it here as an example of a really horrible co-ordinated attack on someone that is totally disproportionate to what they have said, whether you agree with them or not (and again I'm just saying that because I don't think this is the thread to discuss that). In this case it's the inadequacy of the internet (heh, 'the internet') in terms of managing this kind of thing and how quickly pretty large scale attacks can be co coordinated - it is no wonder people are worried about speaking out and contributes to the difficulties in being able to challenge inequalities.
Thought you might be interested in this: the Daily Mail wrote about her tweet (the fake one, and a shortened version of a genuine tweet), and have now issued a correction https://twitter.com/PriyamvadaGopal/sta ... 0773532676
"I got a flu virus named after me 'cause I kissed a bat on a dare."

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Mon Nov 16, 2020 6:40 pm

Thanks! And a £25k payout, and legal fees, hope it was worth it for them.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:36 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:43 pm
discovolante wrote:
Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:32 pm
Natives by Akala gets a lot of good press, it is on my list.
It is really excellent, and I highly recommend it. It's probably more of an account of current and historical structural racism in Britain rather than a guide to ending it, but that's valuable too.

The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla is another good one along from a UK perspective.
FINALLY got round to reading (and finishing) Natives. In my defence I didn't really read much at all during late summer autumn.

And yes it was very good. At first I thought it was going to be all a bit anecdotey, which is fine but obviously it being Akala I'd expected something a bit more substantial. But he delivered on that soon enough and the anecdotes were all very illuminating as well, and often pretty heartbreaking. I'm glad he spent so much time focusing on the education system/childhood because it's not something I've personally come across being discussed in any great detail, just in more general terms.

I've got to admit, the final chapter gave me some food for thought, when he was talking about the shifting of world powers etc. I'm going to expose myself here and I'm a bit worried about doing it but here we go. For about as long as I've been aware of the fact that Britain is an 'ex-empire' and not really that important any more, and was extremely brutal when it was dominant, I've known intellectually that that it's fine that we aren't the great power we once were, who cares if European domination is drawing to a close, sh.t happens and we need to get over ourselves. But I think that as soon as I'd realised that cognitively (whenever that was), I'd kind of suppressed a little bit of anxiety I had about it, where somehow I did feel like it maybe was a bit of a problem for me. Maybe because of some residual anxiety that the rest of the world might just try and get its own back ;). So, I never really *thought* that our place in the world changing was a problem, and I also think that my actions in life have, albeit extremely inconsistently, more or less been in line with what I thought/knew, but I think I did actually feel it a bit but had just got so used to ignoring that feeling that I didn't think I actually had it, probably partly out of shame or whatever. But reading that chapter made me realise that, if I was being completely honest with myself, I had been a bit worried about it. But almost as soon as I realised that, I realised how absurd it was and got over it almost immediately. Pooft, gone. It was nice.

Anyway the only reason I have said that is in case anyone else has experienced or is experiencing anything similar. I am sure everyone else on here is vastly more enlightened than me and managed to tackle and eliminate all of their prejudices decades ago, but you never know.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:41 pm

discovolante wrote:
Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:36 pm
I am sure everyone else on here is vastly more enlightened than me and managed to tackle and eliminate all of their prejudices decades ago, but you never know.
Nope, still working on it.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:45 pm

discovolante wrote:
Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:36 pm
I've got to admit, the final chapter gave me some food for thought, when he was talking about the shifting of world powers etc. I'm going to expose myself here and I'm a bit worried about doing it but here we go. For about as long as I've been aware of the fact that Britain is an 'ex-empire' and not really that important any more, and was extremely brutal when it was dominant, I've known intellectually that that it's fine that we aren't the great power we once were, who cares if European domination is drawing to a close, sh.t happens and we need to get over ourselves. But I think that as soon as I'd realised that cognitively (whenever that was), I'd kind of suppressed a little bit of anxiety I had about it, where somehow I did feel like it maybe was a bit of a problem for me. Maybe because of some residual anxiety that the rest of the world might just try and get its own back ;). So, I never really *thought* that our place in the world changing was a problem, and I also think that my actions in life have, albeit extremely inconsistently, more or less been in line with what I thought/knew, but I think I did actually feel it a bit but had just got so used to ignoring that feeling that I didn't think I actually had it, probably partly out of shame or whatever. But reading that chapter made me realise that, if I was being completely honest with myself, I had been a bit worried about it. But almost as soon as I realised that, I realised how absurd it was and got over it almost immediately. Pooft, gone. It was nice.
The people most affected by the end of European domination won't be the Europeans. They will continue for a long time to relatively wealthy and comfortable.

South-east Asia and Africa are where we're especially seeing the rising influence of China and the declining influence of Europe and the US.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:51 pm

I don't think Akala was particularly saying that Europeans are going to get f.cked over by the rise of China etc. Quite the opposite in fact, he was more or less saying that our perceived loss of dominance has caused a bit of an existential crisis in a lot of people who have been so used to being 'on top' that they've decided that what is happening in Europe (whatever that may be) is some kind of invasion or genocide, when obviously we aren't even remotely close to that. But he was arguing that there is a shift in the balance of power at play nonetheless. (That's a fairly simplistic summary...)
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Dec 01, 2020 8:16 pm

discovolante wrote:
Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:51 pm
I don't think Akala was particularly saying that Europeans are going to get f.cked over by the rise of China etc. Quite the opposite in fact, he was more or less saying that our perceived loss of dominance has caused a bit of an existential crisis in a lot of people who have been so used to being 'on top' that they've decided that what is happening in Europe (whatever that may be) is some kind of invasion or genocide, when obviously we aren't even remotely close to that. But he was arguing that there is a shift in the balance of power at play nonetheless. (That's a fairly simplistic summary...)
I haven’t read the book but I seem to agree with him.

I’m just adding that the people who are finding out whether the new boss is the same as the old boss are in places like Indonesia or Mozambique.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Tue Dec 01, 2020 8:32 pm

Fair enough!
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
discovolante
Stummy Beige
Posts: 4084
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:10 pm

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by discovolante » Wed Dec 02, 2020 8:21 pm

I've moved some posts to the Fascist China thread as that one is a bit more on topic.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.

User avatar
Woodchopper
Princess POW
Posts: 7057
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2019 9:05 am

Re: How to help end structural racism

Post by Woodchopper » Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:38 pm


Post Reply